Grylls - A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character

This book is written for our three boys: Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry.

Sometimes life can be tough, but I hope this can serve as a good route map to guide you through the challenges and on towards your dreams. Life is short and precious live it boldly, my special ones.

We love you so much and are so proud of you.
For ever.

&

Thank you, my beautiful Shara, for being my rock, my friend and my encouragement. I like to think that together we make a pretty solid team...

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
JOHN 10:10

CONTENTS

This isnt a get-rich-quick book this is an insiders guide on how to follow your heart, and live an empowered, effective, fun-filled life. And in a contest between the two, there is only ever one real winner.

The place to start this life journey is with finding your dream.

Dreams are powerful. They are among those precious few intangibles that have inspired men and women to get up, go to hell and back, and change the world.

And Im not talking about the sort of fantasy dreams that cant physically happen I am talking about the sort of dream that will inspire you, one that you are really prepared to sweat for, in order to make it become your reality.

This quote from T. E. Lawrence means a lot to me:

All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

Our job is to be the dangerous type. The one who dreams by day and acts to make those dreams come alive and actually happen.

So take some time to get this right. Go for a long walk. Think big. Think about what really makes you smile.

Ask yourself what you would do if you didnt need the money. Ask yourself what really excites you. Ask what would inspire you to keep going long after most people would quit.

Find those answers and therein lies your dream. We all have our own personal Everest, and if we follow its calling, that is when life truly becomes an adventure.

Now, obviously your dream needs to be realistic and achievable, so use your common sense and exercise good judgement but dont confuse realism with pessimism! Think big, make sure it is physically possible, and as long as the key ingredients to achieving it are vision and hard work, then go for it.

Write it down. Pin it on your wall somewhere you will see it every day.

Words and pictures have power.

Got it?

OK, we have begun...

The very next thing that will happen, once you write your goals down and start to talk to people about them, is that you will meet those all-too-common cynics who will look at you and smirk.

I call them the dream-stealers.

Beware: they are more dangerous to mankind than you might ever imagine.

In life, we will never be short of people who want to knock our confidence or mock our ambitions.

There are lots of reasons why people might want to rain on your parade: perhaps theyre a little jealous that you want more out of life than they might hope for, or theyre worried your success will make them feel inferior. It might be that their motives come from a better place and they just want to spare you the failure, heartache and tears.

Either way, the results are the same: you get dissuaded from achieving your dreams and from fulfilling your potential.

The key is not to listen to them too hard. Hear them, if you must out of respect but then smile and push on.

Remember, the key to your future success is going to be embracing the very same things those dream-stealers are warning you about: the failure, the heartache and the tears.

All those things will be key stepping stones on the road to success, and are actually good solid markers that you are doing something right.

The greatest journeys all start with a single step.

When you stand at the bottom of a mountain, you can rarely see a clear route to the top. It is too far away and the path too twisty and hidden behind obstacles. The only way to climb the sucker is to start and then keep putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

Theres a quote from Martin Luther King that I love:

Take the first step in faith. You dont have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.

It is good advice.

When you are setting out on a long and difficult journey towards your goal, you will not be able to foresee every obstacle or anticipate every lucky break. But what you will find is that with every step you gain experience, perspective, skill and confidence. It is these elements that will ultimately help you reach your goal.

But you only gain experience, perspective, skill and confidence when you start moving.

See how it works now?

Sometimes the journey ahead can feel so daunting and so implausible that we lack the courage to take the first step. And there is never a shortage of good excuses: its not the right time; the odds are too stacked against me; or no one like me has ever done it before.

Im also willing to bet that Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Everest, or even Thomas Edison, trying thousands and thousands of times to make the light bulb work, had a good list of excuses that they could have used, too.

And I can promise you they all felt inadequate at many times along their path.

You know what the sad thing is? Its that most people never find out what they are truly capable of, because the mountain looks frightening from the bottom, before you begin. It is easier to look down than up.

Theres a poignant poem by Christopher Logue that Im often reminded of when people tell me their reasons for not embarking on a great adventure.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if you can just take that first step off the edge, you might find that you, too, can fly.

If you can just take that first step towards your own dreams take that enormous leap of faith towards beginning whatever it is then new possibilities open up before you.

It is the magic of beginning. Things start to happen.

Then it is all about hanging on for the ride keeping cheerful, not quitting, trusting the right people, listening to that inner voice, doing what others wont or cant, and never losing sight of the goal.

But more of all that good stuff to come...

We live in a society where people love to equate success with money. It is always a mistake.

I have met enough unhappy millionaires to know that money alone does not make you happy. Ive seen people work so hard they do not have any time for their families (or even time to enjoy the money).

They doubt their friends motives, or become paranoid about people trying to steal from them.

Wealthy people can all too easily end up feeling guilty and unworthy, and it can be a heavy load to carry especially if you dont treat that fickle impostor right.

You see, money, for its own sake, like success or failure, is a thing of little lasting significance. It is what we do with it and how we treat it that makes the life-changing difference.

Money, success and failure can drastically improve or ruin peoples lives. So you have got to treat it for what it is. And you have got to stay the master of it.

Wealthy people so often find that the summit of their mountains the success that they sought isnt enough. And they are right. It isnt enough to satisfy our deep hunger for meaning and purpose. (And we will talk about that later on.)